Issue 62 • November 2026
Faeries
edited by Silvatiicus Riddle

Table of Contents

Editor’s Introduction • Silvatiicus Riddle

Fairy Mounds • B. R. Dionysius
What The Water Took • Brittany Redd
Let the Faeries Take Them • Christina Sng
The Forest Darklings • Clarabelle Miray Fields
Battlefield of the Red Caps • Crystal Sidell
The Barrow’s Shadow • Deborah L. Davitt
Changeling • Deborah Sage
Black Fairy • Jan Cronos
Dokkaebi, Far From Home • Jess Cho
Petrichor • Kim Malinowski
Faun • Kristen Baum DeBeasi
Elfshot • L. A. Hyland
Kholomodumo • Lee Clark Zumpe
Pollinating Pixie • Lorraine Schein
Faeries of the Bayou • Lynne Sargent
Subterranean Dragon • Mary Soon Lee
A Sailor’s Ghost Recounts a Siren’s Call • Ngô Bình Anh Khoa
The Forbidden Lodge • Pedro Iniguez
Let Me Show You • Dr. Sara Cleto and Dr. Brittany Warman
As the Shootings Continue • Sarah Grace Tuttle
Will-o’-the-Wisp (an evocation) • Scott J. Couturier
The Human’s Lament (As Sung by the Gandharva) • Shveta Thakrar
Bridget • Stephanie M. Wytovich
Death Moped • Tony Daly

Fairy Mounds

The signs become more devious. The worn ant-trail
across the manicured lawn rebounds after a week &
a half of no action; like a secret passage that closes right
before your eyes, its frame blending into the hill’s green
door jamb. The students have vanished into the fairy
mound of their homes; centuries will pass before they
come out again, not having aged, thinking only an hour
has passed. Your blood has an elf-queen in it blunting
your iron. It is you who will have changed. A manticore
will be sighted in the Sumatran rainforest for the first time
in three thousand years; a mythical blowback & canal waters
will be pure enough to drink as if the gods have eased back
into them. At school, a honeyeater clacks at you from a dry
birdbath so you fill it up; part blessing, mostly a glamour.

—B. R. Dionysius

What The Water Took

—Brittany Redd

Let the Faeries Take Them

Let the faeries take them,
My mother always says
Whenever I tell her about
The bullies in my school
Or the teacher who stares
At us girls a little too long.

Truly, not long after,
The bullies are gone.
The teacher is gone.
I ask her how she knew.
She stares at me and says,
The faeries took them.

One night, I spy a glowing light
In my backyard. It must be
The faeries, I think. There
They are, darting around
In a circle where I see
Someone huddled in a ball.

The faeries spin faster and faster
Till the circle blurs and vanishes.
The next day, I look around
And ask my mother where
My father is. Touching the bruises
Around her neck, she says:

The faeries took him.

—Christina Sng

The Forest Darklings

you must beware
the darkened forest edges, darling,
those sunset selvages between sleep and dream,

secret places
where summer seems to linger on
for longer than it should, the veil between seasons thinning—

you likely know their kind by many names:
wisps in the willows, woodland sprites,
fireflies,

and though their shapes
and faces have changed across the years,
their furtive magic always remains the same–

winking lantern-lights
that beckon you to follow them in the dark,
each step leading you farther than the last,

charms of laughter full of
gold-forged promises of hidden treasure
hiding and seeking around twisting trees,

stealing your wits
and inviting you to dance ever closer
so you don’t notice the advance of twilight closing in,

so lost in the witchery
of the forest wild that you fail to realize
you should have turned back long ago

before it was too late
and you’ve already crossed the threshold
into the other world, quarry of the faerie kin—

and before you say
it’s all nonsense, darling,
taking your grain of salt with what I have to say,

know that they’re always watching you,
these forest darklings, watching and waiting
for their chance to carry you away—

be mindful at dusk
or when you’re tired,
on the cusp of falling headlong into sleep—

they’re watching you, my dear,
through the forest’s eyes, waiting for you
to follow them just beyond our reach.

—Clarabelle Miray Fields

Battlefield of the Red Caps

Children, listen! Steer clear of that wild vegetation near the dried-up well. Don’t let curiosity lead you astray like the others. Shh, listen! You’ll be sorry if you walk there, where unyielding thistles grow like weeds and thorns bleed barefoot wanderers. Those perfumed petals are a veneer of peace, masking a battlefield in miniature: Gnomes cloaked in tunics and chainmail, scabbards secured at the hips – they parade through the tulips and lilies, leave snail-like trails in the high grass, flash daggers and strike swords at the slightest provocation. They ignore my words, my supplications to shed arms. Oh, how the violence repels! Bees won’t buzz there; it is a garden they refuse to pollinate. Butterflies, too, flutter elsewhere. Some nights the air is heavy with death cries mistaken for cricket song and Mother Earth’s stomach bloats, full of breathless curses and severed arteries. Listen, loves! You don’t want to see the horrors of their war. Now keep to the path; that way the soil is littered with red caps and bone shards.

—Crystal Sidell

The Barrow’s Shadow

Hands raised the hill high
a bone-barrow blighted.

Few footsteps fell here
save those of souls who sought
speech with time-lost spirits,
dust-drowned and dark, in a
charnel house chthonic.

The green grew over gray stones;
those who followed, forgot.
Fleeting memory, so fallible,
shaped old graves to new songs,
recalled power, potential.

Death, the underworld, declared
the forgotten faery realm;
ancestors became elves,
both fey and fell, armed with
elf-shot, trespassers
unwelcome, children abducted.

Then elves and ancestors
both faded, forgotten,
transformed to Tinkerbells,
and garish garden gnomes.

—Deborah L. Davitt

Changeling

She weeps without sound,
Traces of tears, grief-etched tendrils
Trailing from empty eyes. Limbs, in catatonic
Rigidity, refuse the cradle’s offering. Deaf to the
Proffered urgings of midwife and
Husband, thoughts lost to the
Persistent hum of futile pleas, she remains
Silent as stone, still as ice.

Better to lie dead in a coffin, bereft of her babe,
Than to hold what sleeps in its stead,
She stands, hollowed by theft, numbed
By despair. Iron-cold anguish the only binding for
Her broken heart. She cannot breathe,
Her child gone.

Leaf-like patterns line tiny hands, intricate symbols
She does not recognize. Old eyes,
Sleepless and emerald green, stare up at her,
Mocking. Her child’s eyes are the blue
Of summer sky, cornflower blue.
She remembers.
Her babe’s eyes were blue.

—Deborah Sage

Black Fairy

Emergent, from the Jumandy caves
in Ecuadorean Amazon,
volcanic tunnels sacred
to the indigenous Kichwa.
She’s winged, dark, not
of complexion,
but dark matter,
benign not malevolent.
Her being is a miracle,
crystalline, translucent.
Photons pass through her,
un-reflected, unabsorbed.
There’s a gravity about her,
it draws you, teases your atoms,
tickles strands of DNA, but
she’s untouchable, unseeable.
Quiet. Do you sense her presence?
A feeling of warmth, soothing,
blissful surrounds you.
Can you feel her benediction.
She hovers, gentle, protective.

—Jan Cronos

Dokkaebi, Far From Home

I find him at the bar, the one
where no one goes if they have
anywhere else to be.
He’s smaller than I remember,
one leg tucked up like a secret,
one hand on the stick beside him,
one hand on the bottle.
I take a seat—this close,
a reek of kerosene and something
earthy, like fallen rain
and burnt rice.
He grunts, sullen; I don’t mind.
I understand what it’s like
to go unseen, avoided,
even without the 감투
pulled low over his eyes.
To live where your name
trips tongues, until
they assign you a new one—
                          ogre, troll, hobgoblin
                          healer, luck-bringer

But when I tell him my 할머니 sends
her remembrances, the sounds
of her name rolling from my lips
like a a song,
a prayer, an offering—
his eyes flicker with flame
as blue as the oceans we crossed,
his laughter as roaring and alive
as the magic
we brought here, too.

—Jess Cho

Petrichor

she slides from earth
bramble braided hair
mouth berry stained
sassafras roots torn
she is of moss silt
colluvial smile
she embraces hillside
falls into bluebells
shaded by lilac
her face eclipsed
battle worn
mud and blood streak brow
humble warrior ready
grasp toes that pass by
kiss kneeling knights
gasp life into the drowning
thoughts find her
she calls them into thicket
whispers cranberry bog dew

—Kim Malinowski

Faun

When she pries herself from the ground for the first time,
her faun skin slips past her shoulders, falls, and settles
around her hips. High above her, fat flakes fall. Snow—
her mind forms the word. Rising to stand on hooved feet,
she lifts her human face to the sky—cloud, she thinks—
extends her tongue to taste heaven as it drifts down.
She shrugs, shakes wild curls over her skin-smooth shoulders.
She turns to wonder. Turns again. In three small steps,
the faun is dancing, looking, seeing. As she sees,
she names all that meets her gaze. Trees—pine. Woods. With each
new word, her world takes shape. She names music and finds
she is holding pipes—bifurcated and pointing
two directions: Forward? Back? She peers at the pipes,
turns again. Steps tentatively. There is a world
waiting to be named. There is music to be made.

—Kristen Baum DeBeasi

Elfshot

A fist of fine flint from the high hills,
drenched in the fury of storms.

Hammer of white stone from the wall of a barrow
that whispers with sorrow and wars.

To be knapped when the Moon rides out darkly,
when the wind blows hard cold from the North.

Point dipped in the blood of a newborn
boy or calf—either will do.

To be set on a shaft made of elder,
painted dark as the berries it bore.

Feather of crow, but not raven,
as the latter have made pacts with men.

Fire from a bow bound in silver
with string spun from an old maiden’s hair.

Shoot them all, my brethren: the trampling cattle,
the tame horse and riders they bear!

—L. A. Hyland

Kholomodumo

it will be summer soon and Kholomodumo
is waiting in the forest to be slain by two hunters

so that all the people it devoured during its recent sojourn
can spill out of its gutted carcass and go about their business—

back to tilling the land of their ancestors, raising livestock,
building communities and tearing them down again;

back to fashioning complicated funerary rituals
meant to propitiate omnipotent gods;

back to the Letšeng diamond mine in the Maluti Mountains,
to trading posts, and the ever-present remnants of colonization.

it will be winter soon and Kholomodumo
is still waiting, slumbering in the Senqu river valley—

the hunters are now migrant laborers, subsistence farmers,
and mine workers, toiling in the shadow of an empire’s corpse.

—Lee Clark Zumpe

Pollinating Pixie

the blueing rain
drips from my other faces
my bodies play hide and seek
in the petals of my past

I bloom a headdress luxuriant
with purple memories
whose stamens pollinate me
to flower my sex across
these twilight fairy waters

—Lorraine Schein

Faeries of the Bayou

Brownies cling to mud islands
that roll like ships
in the wake of an airboat’s wave

ballybogs watch the alligators through hibernation
and tend properly to the decay
if their stomach gases go undiffused
after human temptation is too great
for biological impulse to save them

pixies coax the flowers to bloom
the dragonflies to pollinate them
infusing the green and brown with a rainbow of life.

—Lynne Sargent

Subterranean Dragon

Within the elf ring
within the fairy ring
within the pixie ring

tiny folk in mad alarm
leapt and turned
to braid a spell

danced a dance in spider-silk
wove the wards within the woods
beneath a midnight moon

tiny folk in mad alarm
leapt and turned
to braid a spell

to still the beast beneath their feet
to snuff the fire in his throat
to bind the ire of tooth and talon

tiny folk in mad alarm
leapt and turned
to braid a spell

between the mushrooms in the ring
threaded underneath their feet
in filaments fine as spider-silk

tiny folk in mad alarm
leapt and turned
to braid a spell—

you saw the fairy ring at dawn
you saw the fairy ring and thought
of fairy joy, a courtship ball

not tiny folk in mad alarm
nor what might sleep
beneath your feet.

—Mary Soon Lee

A Sailor’s Ghost Recounts a Siren’s Call

Whipped by the waves upon the writhing sea,
We strove to steer our ship to safety when
A sudden song seeped in my ears, and then,
A moonlit form midst smashing foam I’d see—
Scales gleaming, bare flesh glistening, eyes dark;
She brushed her veil of sable hair and smiled—
A pearly, sharpened scythe. I stared, beguiled,
And toward her staggered, spurning my friends’ barks.
Her soothing lyrics cleansed my crumbly thought
And graced my mind with visions most divine:
A deepened kiss, a tight embrace—sublime
Were dreams come true: In her arms, I was caught.
My crew sailed forth toward an uncertain dawn
While I—in calm abyssal bliss—was gone.

—Ngô Bình Anh Khoa

The Forbidden Lodge

It is tucked away in some remote location;
buried in snow and
nestled amongst the birch and pines.
The trophy room is adorned with
heads neatly mounted on lacquered walls:
A unicorn,
a dragon,
a griffin,
a phoenix,
a harpy,
and the mighty Cerberus.
There are fairies pinned down in glass displays
and a rug made from the hide of a sasquatch.
A stuffed kitsune keeps watch over the mantle
as the dying embers from the fireplace keep its fur warm.
Every horn, tooth, muzzle, and beak;
every scrap of fur, every feather is a prized possession
to a corpse that once was an old man who once was a boy
who decided to track down the critters that once made him smile.
Storybook creatures hunted for sport, vanity, pride.
He has recently joined their ranks,
motionless in his rocking chair
forever guarding a collection
of stolen dreams.

—Pedro Iniguez

Let Me Show You

This godmother of hers, who was a fairy, said to her, “You wish that you could go to the ball; is it not so?”

“Yes,” cried Cinderella, with a great sigh.

“Well,” said her godmother, “be but a good girl, and I will contrive that you shall go.”

—“Cinderella,” Charles Perrault

You called me “Fairy Godmother,”
When I stepped from the night.

If I had truly been a fairy,
No tears could have moved me.
If I had truly been your godmother,
I’d have already been beside you.

Small hearts bursting with injustice,
Your birds summoned me—
Tiny voices crying out for magic, for blood,
Will not be ignored.

Give me your hand, Cinder Girl,
And let me show you:

You can make carriages from pumpkins,
Ballgowns from rags,
Men from rats,
Glass slippers from nothing at all.

Use your tears, your buried rage, the
Leaves from your mother’s tree.

Feel rooted power stir,
And remember.

—Dr. Sara Cleto & Dr. Brittany Warman

As the Shootings Continue

Banshees ride unseen
atop speeding ambulances,
adding their shrieks¹
to the sirens.
And who do we grieve
today?
Whose photos will rest
among roses and candles
on the bloodstained cement?
Surely,
surely,
not yours.²

                                              1. The first banshee shriek was
                                              Brigid’s wail of grief,
                                              echoing across the battlefield
                                              after she learned
                                              her son was murdered.

                                              2. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

—Sarah Grace Tuttle

Will-o’-the-Wisp (an evocation)

Will-o’-the-wisp
Wanders lonely places
Swamps & bogs where one
Can vanish without trace.

Will-o’-the-wisp
Burning hundred colors
Spectral blue to a lurid red
Luring the lost wanderer.

Will-o’-the-wisp
Lit with Midnight’s hue
Haunts morass & battlefield
To all travelers’ rue.

Will-o’-the-wisp
Seen over cemeteries
& around rank waterways
Forward to a foul fate
It draws one on.

Will-o’-the-wisp
Abides in tomb & tarn
Marking places of bones
Where faeries rejoice in wicked
Revels of the thorn.

Will-o’-the-wisp
Known the world over,
Ignis fatuus, goblin flame,
Hinkypunk or Hob-o’-lantern
Jack his oldest & nearest name.

Will-o’-the-wisp
Dies away come dawn
Receding to murky marshy pools
Until nighttime again falls,
Prime for the luring
Of fools.

—Scott J. Couturier

The Human’s Lament (As Sung by the Gandharva)

My heart, how it aches.
    Her grief was a gray kite, scrawled in scratches and tooth marks. It caught
    on a cold, fluffy cloud, soaring, ascending, spiraling until it tumbled
    past the gilt pillars of Indra Dev’s court, where the gandharvas played
    their celestial songs of perpetual love and longing.

My smile drains of nectar.
    One such musician, his gaze aglow with wonder, set aside his veena and,
    still singing, extended a hand. The kite, damp from the cloud’s chill kiss,
    settled into his grasp, as soft as skin, as deeply bruised, too, and
    as he fingered its markings, he heard her anguished cry.

I lie by this river, forsaken, forgotten,
    It pierced his chest as surely as Indra Dev’s vajra rent the sky in a storm,
    so with his mighty wingspan, as plumed and powerful as a hawk’s,
    he departed the court, coasting over the forest and through the flowers,
    until at last he spied her down by the dark water, and alighted.

My limbs as worn through as rotted logs.
    The woman writhed in agony, her hair long white tangles, her body
    weak and wasting. Once it had swum in this same river, as strong
    as a seal, yet when it failed to dazzle or delight, her admirers, fickle all,
    wandered off in search of fresher, more immediate entertainments.

The sparks I knew as dreams snuffed out.
    She spoke proudly of dismantling great houses and romancing rebels,
    of pruning roses and planting radishes, of painting and dancing and
    sharing secrets with friends far dearer than any lover. Then came
    the pain, she said, a searing to strip her bones and strangle her spirit.

My soul withers like the oldest of apples.
    The gandharva, who knew only pleasure and splendor, received her tale
    with an avid ear. Disease and decline were to him as exotic adventures,
    yet her sorrows stirred his pity, and in the gaps between sentences,
    he sustained her with diluted soma like drops of honey.

None loves me, here at the end.
    Tears trickled down the woman’s cheeks, the swift river made salty. They
    glittered like the gandharva’s sacred gemstones as she sobbed. “I am alone,”
    she said. “Alone, ailing, and afraid.” But the gandharva, thoroughly
    stricken by her plight, clasped her hand and swore to stay.

So I give you my breath,
    When she beckoned, he brought his ear to her lips. “Think of me,” she pleaded.
    At that, the gandharva nearly laughed aloud; did she truly believe he could
    hope to do otherwise? Her stories now dwelled within him, braided into
    his memories, dyeing his vision a vivid wash of unfamiliar hues.

My voice,
    Her eyes drifting shut, the woman slept at last. The gandharva studied
    the slow rise and fall of her chest, how it ceased to keep time with the river.
    In blessing, he played his bansuri and sang a lilting lullaby until she sighed,
    her fading away as hushed as the cloud that had borne her grief aloft.

My song.
    The humbled gandharva plucked her hair, a few strands here, a few more there,
    and restrung his veena, that her mortal voice might forever overlay the airiest
    of his melodies. Then, placing her body on its pyre, he pledged to recount
    the woman’s fate to Indra Dev’s entire golden court that very dawn.

—Shveta Thakrar

Bridget

Six men, a cottage full of accusations
flames licking black stockings,
neck bent against the bed

“Are you the wife of Michael Cleary?
Do you swear by the name of God?”

Hot milk down a scratched throat
gag reflex against superstition,
a heated blade held to flesh

I am the wife of Michael Cleary.
I swear by the name of God.

Cracked window, bloodied yolks
bare womb howling,
a dressmaker’s calloused hands

“Are you the wife of Michael Cleary?
Do you swear by the name of God?”

Fairie forts and heavy spirals
hidden portals in a mushroom ring,
a three-mile walk, a shortcut home

I am the wife of Michael Cleary
I swear by the name of God.

Tortured bones, desperate pleas
baptism by urine,
a fresh loaf of bread

“Are you the wife of Michael Cleary?
Do you swear by the name of God?”

Bog wife, stripped bare
oil lamps and gateway screams,
a fireplace, a shallow grave

I am the wife of Michael Cleary
I swear by the name of God.

—Stephanie M. Wytovich

Death Moped

The Dullahan paused at a stoplight,
electric moped idling silently,
moonlight providing an earie glow
from safety tape reflectors
stuck to plastic fenders
and black pleather jacket.

He hummed a K-pop ditty,
from flame decaled biker helmet
safely secured in handlebar basket
decorated with lilies, roses, shamrocks,
by the beautiful Lake Maiden
he imagined was puttering around
their shared Kelpie Garden.

When the light turned green,
he cranked the throttle
until the 3,000-watt motor
topped out at 30 miles per hour.
Recalling his headless death horse,
he mused on how Bran Dubh
couldn’t match the moped’s speed,
though her endurance was uncanny.

It was amusing, he admitted,
how mortals fled in terror before
the headless flaming horse.
The moped’s not as intimidating,
but catching his prey was easier
when they lacked fear.

—Tony Daly